So when Journalists do it then it's called 'hacking' and there's a big public furore but when governments do it, it's called surveillance and we're supposed to accept it?

Now that Cameron's buddy Coulson has been sent to jail for looking at the private communication of members of the public it's apparently become ok for the government to give themselves the same abilities , you know, because of the kiddie fiddlers, terrorists and the bogeyman under the bed. I'm struggling to see the difference with the two situations - both are spying without permission.

Coulson only got a slap on a wrist - you can do the same time for pinching a bottle of water. Plus he'll do it in a low security "hotel style" (as he used to call them) prison. And Rebekah Brooks got off scot free. So it;s not as if the government think hacking is bad. Oh unless you're a private citizen of course in which case they'll lock you up and throw away the key or give you to the USA for even worse treatment.

A hastily-enacted and vaguely-worded law, with broad cross-party support from representatives who are too frightened of being seen as "soft on terrorism" to question anything that it says? Why, I'm sure there's no chance that that could ever be misused or extended to cover areas far outside its original remit. It reminds me of the Patriot Act in the US, and we all know what a splendid success that has been.

It's moments like these that make me want to tell our elected representatives as a body: “Just give us the fucking keys, you're clearly not fit to drive.”

To be fair, it's not that vaguely written, it's pretty upfront that that they can demand that any communications provider must store up to 12 months of your communications if the government tells them to. Where 'communications provider' means any entity that might have data on you, even outside the UK.

I don't see anything vague about "all of your data are belong to us", it's only as vague as saying "this crocodile is going to eat you", you might wonder which end it's going to start with, but at the end of the day, you're getting eaten.

British politics portal Full fiscal autonomy (FFA) – also known as devolution max, devo-max, fiscal federalism, independence lite or independence-minus, – is a particular form of far-reaching devolution proposed for Scotland. The term has come to describe a constitutional arrangement in which instead of receiving a block grant from the UK Exchequer as at present, the Scottish Parliament would receive all taxation levied in Scotland; it would be responsible for most spending in Scotland but make ...